Next week, Google is holding its annual I/O developers conference in San Francisco, but that’s apparently not stopping the company from making some developer-focused announcements now. With Google Developers Live, which is launching today, the company plans to “bring you the excitement of Google I/O year-round.” As Louis Gray, a program manager on Google’s developer relations team notes (and here we thought he was working on Google+), Google plans to use this new site to “feature live, interactive broadcasts ranging from developer-focused game shows to Office Hours where you can connect with the engineers who created and work on your favorite Google product.[...]

The U.S. government’s ongoing crusade against insider trading has claimed its latest victim.Alnoor�Ebrahim, a former network consultant for AT&T, admitted on Monday that he fed�sensitive�information to traders and hedge fund managers, who then used that information to buy and sell stocks, Reuters reports.Many of the details�concerned�key metrics like sales numbers, which companies make a point to keep to themselves. With his position at AT&T, Ebrahim was privy to this sort of key, nonpublic information about devices like the Blackberry, iPhone, and others.Ebrahim worked as a member of expert-network firm�Primary Global Research, and from 2008 to 2010 received about�$180,000[...]

The traditional business phone line may be dying a slow death but Canadian start-up Hookflash is looking to speed up its demise. The Calgary-based company is launching an iPad app� by the same name Thursday that integrates LinkedIn’s directory, giving business users a free over-the-top alternative for voice, HD video and messaging. It’s the first communications app to build upon LinkedIn’s social graph and demonstrates some of the latent potential in the network of 160 million people.Hookflash users will sign-in with a LinkedIn account and will be able to communicate with other LinkedIn users in their contact list, which is populated from their LinkedIn directory. Users wi[...]